Don't Run From Anything, Run Towards Everything

Archive for the month “April, 2012”

Someone do a meme of this: a picture of liquor, beer and cigarettes, and next to it a box of cheap toaster tarts and store brand lunchmeat. The words on top saying ‘Money’s Short’, the bottom ‘Priorities’.

I started the day wide-eyed smiling at everything and each person I passed would look at me as if my nose were missing, a direct view to the brain and they could see out the back of my skull, they were that surprised about it. Now though, I sit here at the bar sulking, staring vacant no smiles and no effort to speak. My legs are sore each bone muscle tendon from toe to hip, literally, my hips are sore I’ve walked so much and I know I have another walk ahead of me, to the train station (subway). I decided to put up fliers for a writing group in Columbus, young people only. I have to think considerably what the fliers say, it must be good. (Now that I’m thinking of moving to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for the summer, I’ll hold off on the fliers.)

Took a stool at the bar, placed my backpack in the next seat and went to use the restroom. Upon returning a woman had taken my seat. I yelled with Zeus-like vehemence at her. I got removed from the bar. I wasn’t mad that I’d lost my seat, plenty of stools were open. Problem was, none of the other stools gave me a view of myself in the mirror behind the bar.

I’ve realized I should have began drinking hours ago. I speak more, more open honest and clever, humor rolling much easier and friendly conversations. Every bartender is a family acquaintance and I’m much more peaceful, smiling at folks and saying hello.

These are just some excerpts from what I managed to scribble last week. My plan is to recant the entire week, writing it from memory for practice. But what I would like to start doing is writing during trips, not waiting until after. I have to update the journals daily.

I look forward to senility. It won’t quench the thirst but rather destroy it. It won’t just burn the veil but the eyes as well, and in the cold I’m left standing in I’ll be incapable of feeling shivers. Yes, senility is the blessing of innocent ignorance. With senility I’ll never have to think, or feel lonely, experience the trying swings of bliss and misery. With senility life will be simple, and I will finally understand it all.

I got on the bus, smiled a hello at the driver and got my ticket, turning seeing most the seats taken, a wheelchair immediate right and two open seats along the window to the left. I sat in the middle of the two seats. At the next stop more people were getting on so to make room I sat in the forward facing seat to my left next to this guy. I didn’t say anything nor did he and I looked out the window watched people as they walked navigating the sour stained sidewalks of breaking life. The kid got off the next stop and I watched him, he wearing a tie-dyed shirt, plaid backpack, my age too! The lesson is obvious: the flow easing gently while I tip in ready to submerge, meeting every path (person) along the way.

I spoke with a homeless man in the park waiting to catch the Greyhound. I gave him one of my oranges and a banana because he was cleaning his toes on the bench about to wring out his underwear and that’s pretty much when you know to help out with some food – spread some love. Then the homeless man taught me about the Universe, the Big Bang it popped out of nowhere is nothing and Star Trek vampires why isn’t life sci-fi yet? The churches are wastes around vacant blocks and life decays slowly in empty lots. Don’t spread yourself too far man, he said, stay a place a while but not like 40 – 50 years. Because you got to keep moving, it’s the right thing to do — that’s what he told me. Then sitting outside the bus station a man near the road said to his coterie ‘oh snap, that’s my friend over there!’ He walked over asking me 14 cents to get a beer, actually a six pack him and his friends wanted to get, 14 cents short. He was the guy who’d directed me to the bus station front door earlier. I had to pull out some change, he’d opened my possibilities so unfortunately I had to open his — karma bites evenly.

Took an eleven hour bus from Pittsburgh, got off the Greyhound and walk outside the Columbus, Ohio station and the first thing, I mean the very first thing someone says to me when I get off the bus, a man by the front door says to me, ‘Yo brother, yo brother! Let me holla at you real quick, what’s goin on brother?’ I try to ignore him but he follows me, of course, ‘Yo brother! Let me holla at you for a dollar fifty!’ Thanks Columbus. I tell him no and wait near the sidewalk for my ride. Two people ask me for a cigarette. No, make that three, and I did give one guy a smoke because he didn’t look homeless, just a dude itching for a smoke. Then a woman walked over and offered to sell me the bike she had, ‘It’s a forty dollar bike you can have it for twenty.’ A guy walking out of the bus station says, ‘Holy shit, everywhere in this town people tryin’ to hustle shit!’ Then a guy pulls in across the street and starts yelling across the street that he’s giving rides out and he’s a great driver, something about being military and how his plates are changed and the handful of people out front trying to ignore him. He asks me about four times to give me a ride, anywhere in Columbus he says. A middle-aged couple comes walking out and he stands right in front of them asking to give them the best cheapest ride real safe in Columbus, standing right in front of them so they have to walk around him and the woman makes eye-contact with me mutters something about ‘fucking scum’ or ‘fucking Columbus’. The ‘great driver’, as the man was billing himself, finally sees an elder woman walking out pulling her bag and carrying two others. He offers her a ride and keeps talking before she can answer. Then he takes one of her bags saying ‘let me help you across the street’ takes the woman’s bags and starts throwing them in his car. Then a guy asked me for four fifty to help out him and his friend.

Literally, all of this happened. I was standing for ten minutes in Columbus and had seven people ask me for things.

Bit of a hiatus. Sorry, but my apologies are insincere. I’ve decided to write this blog like a letter, like I’m addressing a good friend who happens to be someone I don’t know, basically bear all and tell everything and no sugar added. It’s train-of-thought, stream-of-consciousness, I’ve been reading too many Beatniks lately. Also I was terribly unhappy, not terribly, but I was out of money and couldn’t find anything to drink, ran out of cigarettes and even scraping what little resin was left in my bowl proved little fruition. All of this is pretty gross and indicative of my priorities. Again, I’ve been reading too many Beatniks lately. I’ve always been rather severely influenced by what I happen to be reading at the time and this all is surely symptomatic, so I’m going to push through the rest of this book real quick.

I’ve begun writing a short story about finding possibilities outside the structure of society, that on the fringes exist endless options. I want to break away from realism for this, to show the ‘possibilities’ that are out there and it’s coming out rather trippy-strange. Like the bright colors of the hippy-acid era but draped in nighttime dark sparkles. Or something. But I want to write it stream of thought, the way Kerouac wrote from his subconscious. The thing though, writing this way is only writing through the Universal and the flow, and you lack your own will in a sense, this meaning you aren’t balanced and aren’t writing with free will. So the challenge has been, and this is what I’ve been going over during this hiatus, how to write through the flow, by directing the flow. I’ve been thinking one way to do this is to create the story in your head, like a memory of a structure you wish to sculpt. Create the story and store it in your subconscious, then write the flow. This way you’ve created a flow and resigned yourself to it. Created a probability wave and focused on it.

The last couple days I’ve slept a lot, I mean 12 hours a day a lot. I don’t think it’s depression, but maybe a falling out of the intense energy I want to focus on writing and everything. Which is why I’ve decided to live in Brooklyn for a while, hoping I can find some people who think like me and, hopefully, we can work together to develop our writing. It would a tremendous boost if I could surround myself with a group of like-minded individuals and we all collectively pushed and shoved energy around. It’s tough staying excited in such a solitary profession, I wish to remedy that. Back to sleeping, wrapping myself in bed and sleeping all day being a little nocturnal mole (I’ve really become quite nocturnal since DP Dough working all night till 4 am). I can’t figure it, like I’m in love with sleeping and I have no qualms wasting the sunshine, although when I do I feel depressed about it, though a lack of sunlight has been shown to induce depression, that’s what seasonal depression is anyway, not enough sunlight during the winter. I’ve gone nocturnal before but always during drinking binges and there’s always been people to drink and sleep all day with. Writing is lonely. I wish to remedy that. But I was thinking about the Universal and Individual maybe having reason to do with sleep, that you need to be unconscious and full in the flow to keep balance with the Individual, I don’t know, speculation, but sleeping to me is like wrapping myself in mystical warm rivers that ask nothing of me flowing with prenatal fluid and keeping safe and undisturbed. Speculation.

I’m also trying to buy massive quantities of drugs on the Silk Road to keep a daze binge, real cheap shit to temporarily lose my mind and I’ve read too much Burroughs.

I promise not to ramble so much in the future, but the blog was left alone like an untouched prick and everything got built up backed up and everything had to splooge out all at once. Maybe that’s a good way to write, something to think about anyway.

I got back from work round 4:30 am yesterday, not tired and I’d gotten myself excited. Really it came out of nowhere I’d been real down and bummed at work and then out of nowhere and I can’t point to any event that could have caused this but my mood swung wildly in the other direction. So by the time we closed the store I was wired and didn’t want to sleep so I decided to get shitfaced. I plugged my laptop to the speakers and blasted The Fratellis and pounded beers and watched the sun rise. I also read a bunch and thought lots and came to many understandings like why we drink, because alcohol suppresses reason, it shrouds the ego and let’s the universe flow easy through your thoughts. Why did Kerouac Benzedrine and liquor while he wrote? to follow the flow. Suppress the Individual to follow the Universal. Anyhows, I’d figured it fun to just throw the beer cans everywhere so that by the time my roommate got back to the apartment around ten the place was trashed and so was I. When I woke up 6:30 because I had work again in a little while I had a pounding headache and a desperate hunger feeling so empty like I hadn’t eaten in days. I walked to the corner mart and spent 10 bucks on drinks but didn’t buy any food, I had calzones left over from work. So I ate one of those. I didn’t sit well. I felt more miserable than before eating and my stomach was upset but I decided to sleep it off. I woke up again 30 minutes before work still feeling absolute crap miserable, my stomaching knotting and turned over. I thought sitting on the toilet would help but I didn’t have to shit and that was a waste of time. Next I jerked off thinking that’d make me feel a bit better, really tugging at it standing in the middle of the floor making a giant mess and it helped a bit but my stomach was still tangled uneasy. So I drank some water but that didn’t help either. I was supposed to be at work 5 minutes ago. To hell with it, I thought, I really need to feel better so I cleared my head and let it flood with filthy thoughts of dirty toilet bowls and puke smelling on my shirt and I ran out the side door of the apartment hands on knees puking another mess of fluids. People on the sidewalk watched funny. Felt a shit load better after that, brushed my teeth and washed up and got to work 30 mins late but they didn’t care anyway.

I read Kerouac’s Essentials of Spontaneous Prose and Belief & Technique For Modern Prose and decided to write every memory I can think of, using them to practice spontaneous prose and making stories out of them. Also, the thing I’m looking for is how to put your Individual into spontaneous prose because as far I can understand it it’s only the Universal that’s writing through you. I thought that maybe you can do this by creating the story first, in your mind and instead of living through it, which is still writing through memory. But if you create the story and let the Universal write it, maybe that’s the answer.

Ice-cubes clinking into two glasses and the Southern Comfort bottle going glug glug glug as it fills them up.
‘Cheers,’ says the one man, raising his glass. ‘Because self-improvement’s life’s only true purpose.’
Smiles the other man, ‘But who ever said we needed one?’

I walked around a lot today, smoked some pot before leaving and was going to go to a writing group but it’s all old people so I ditched and walked around German Village for a while instead. I decided to read lots of Beat literature because they figured something out and I don’t know what else to look to, so all of this means I went back to the book store, the big one with all the dozens of rooms and I stuck a copy of The Portable Beat Reader right down my pants and walked out. I wanted to find this red-haired girl I’d seen working at a deli but she wasn’t there and I spent $10 on a sandwich that sucked. But maybe I’m spoiled by New Jersey delis. Anyways, here’s what I wrote out when I got to the coffee shop later on.

This generation needs leaders and spokespeople, outlets and descriptions, reactions to what society is going through. There is palpable tensions in the streets and minds where the youth walk. Change is growing till ready to burst and it is of yet undirected, focused on nothing and fingers are grasping at everything, because the modern revolution still floats a nebulous air, ineffable and undefined. A rallying point must be pushed through, an idea, completely original new, a revolution and reevaluation of thought and self, life, government, religion and society and spirituality. The path of the human race must be changed, this generation must be the one to do it, for it would only be in cowardice if we chose not to try.

Also I’ve been thinking and I want to go to Brooklyn and find writers with similar ideas because I want to learn how to become a writer. I want to understand what it takes and I have much much much to learn still. I’ll save up some money and go meet people there. I’m really anxious and dropping out was irrational and stupid but what’s done is done and there’s no going back, and there has to be something else out there, outside the norms and along the fringes, and I intend to find it if it takes my entire poor sorry life and it kills me without mercy in the end.

In the past it was a drug that changed the way people thought. What if this time it was an idea? What if everyone took to the idea that we only exist for the possibilities, and everyone only ever acted to expand the possibilities of his or her neighbor?

If the Individual Will (Ego and Chaos) is always striving for more possibilities, work, than is it logical to consider, with an ever-expanding population, that the idea of a nonpossible will be impossible. What I mean is, that with an infinite population (an endlessly ever-expanding population) striving for infinite work, there will be infinite possibilities and that is Omega. (Of course this all very far in the future, but that doesn’t make it less true or less moral) The I. Will is always striving to open, and the U. Will is always focusing, bring them together and you become the perfect human, infinite in the possibilities you can bring into focus.

Last night I was smoking pot with my roommate Alex and the idea hit me that I wanted to become a travel blogger, that that was how to open all my possibilities, by financing my travels by writing about them. Meanwhile as I started scribbling the record player had been playing The Beatles and I hadn’t been hearing any of it, zoned out and not hearing the music for a while, but then the words came ‘What do you want to be?’ and The Beatles were singing and these words froze in my head, sung at the exact moment I had begun to write, completely unaware of the lyrics up to that point. So I’m going to be a travel blogger. And it’ll be good writing too because everything will glow and I’ll be blown expanded open love and chaos riling running towards every known end of worldly desperation finding enlightenment. That’s how I open my possibilities. Then I focus them.

If we all come back in another life, regarding of course that there is someone who continuously creates us, doesn’t that mean exponential growth in the human population? And what would a mathematical equation of this look like? Would it show a curve comparable to the actual human population growth of the past 200 years?

Is it right to be holy? If the essence of human existence is choice and free will – the expansion of possibilities – and we really only do exist to tether the opposing seams of the Universe, to tether Order & Chaos and Heaven & Hell and Certainty & Uncertainty, than is it right to negate your free will and live holy and saintly following only the Universal Will and abiding completely by the flow? Because if you 100% follow the flow than you’re denying what makes us human, you’re denying free will and every other possibility. But of course you did chose what to follow. Whatever the answer I don’t care. I will continue my search for the sublime, to find the open endless possibilities that exist where the two seams of the Universe are tethered together. To strive for and attain as much freedom as I possibly can, and always trying to expand the possibilities of my neighbors as I go.

This is why sunrise and sunset are the best times to meditate, when the world glows with the faint light of neither day or night, but the enlightenment of what exists inbetween, when the trees and flowers gently laugh and sigh and you breathe deep and easy and see between the leaves the glowing light as they cast long shadows. Standing on a beach at dawn, the flat waves stretching pale shimmering white to the horizon, gentle waves folding and gliding up the smooth sand. To the right rises dawn, soft orange and pale blue sky, to the left the remnants of night twinkling dark purple and the last twinkling stars. Standing in the middle on the beach, understanding there is nothing above nor below you, for in the vast empty Universe those terms mean nothing. But here right and left exist.

I bought myself an 18 pack PBR last night, got durnk (misspelled it but I like it and I’m going to start saying durnk from now on) and read Dharma Bums with every intention of finishing it. I got to the last chapter, smoked some pot, and fell asleep. So I woke this afternoon, drank more beer and stumbled to Kafe Kerouac where I drank more beer, offended the proprietor and finally finished Dharma Bums. Then I slept beneath a tree in the Oval at OSU. I ate a burger afterwards because I was feeling empty, a great greasy American burger and lots of peanuts and soda while I thought of nothing and felt sad. I was empty but not the good kind, the kind that makes you think of nihilism and feel like nothing no use trying. So I dipped the bun in the burger grease and slurped soda smoked cigarets felt fine. Then at Travonna’s a man talked about society controlling what people thought, defining who they were to make them think they needed everything oh so gratifyingly materialistic and shiny. While they controlled us. For their power. I agreed mostly with him, thought him arrogant and foolish at times, but the overall idea was correct: society abolishes opportunity and possibility and the only free way is outside it, walk the fringes. So I decided I’ll never again be a part of society because who ever wants to be the person you’re told to be? Quit picking my bark; these branches must flourish.

I don’t know what it is anymore. Is it right to negate the self and live lowly, never contributing to success or failure and only ever helping others and never yourself? Or is it right to embrace both good and bad and search for the infinite? To expand yourself to as many possibilities as possible? And again, what’s the best way to do that? Is it wise and holy and sacred to give up everything and wander and work only to keep myself from starving, or rather beg?

I’ve decided to stay drunk, it’s the only holy and wise and gentle thing to do: to neglect all possibilities and just let the world do the work, follow the others’ path and just wallow, drunk and happy blissful, like a saint.

Found an excellent article today by Andrew Sullivan on The Daily Beast. It’s about Christianity, how it’s tarnished rusted destroyed by centralized power, and it has some very interesting insight. Belief in Jesus is the same as Buddha, nothing different for it’s all the same (Buddha isn’t mentioned in the article, that was whoever). But it’s true, whatever ‘religion’ you take to it’s all about the negation of self, complete resignation to the universal will. My problem though, is that through such resignation you give up your free will, which is given to us by God or the Universe or the Spaghetti Monster, whatever created existence. So are we supposed to make use of our free will, which inherently involves the use of the opposite of ‘complete resignation to the universal’? because free will only exists in a balance between the two extremes. Or are we supposed to deny ourselves free will, deny all evil and sorrow and balance? Would God have given us free will if he didn’t want us to use it? Would God have given us hell if he didn’t want us to use it?

Anyway, the article’s about what Jesus really taught, not what 2000 years of reshaped ideas teach. Buddhists get it. Hippies get it and so did all the Beatniks and Dharma Bums. But Christians have forgotten it, and feel free to point at the Pope and Santorum. The article makes me want to read the New Testament and do what the article describes Thomas Jefferson doing.

Are humans the only animals to have ‘baby teeth’, the only creature on Earth to have a set of teeth and lose them to grow a bigger set? And if so, why is this a distinctly human trait? How did this help us along our evolutionary path?